FMC Technologies

Success Story

Before finding Egnyte, we were in a constant battle with unreliable internet connection, slow upload speeds, and outdated storage devices. Egnyte has now enabled us to operate in a positively unprecedented fashion, saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.Chris Primeau, IT Manager FMC Technologies

Company Overview

Oil & Gas - FMC Technologies is a leading global provider of technology solutions for the Energy Industry. The company designs, manufactures and services technologically sophisticated systems and products, such as subsea production and processing systems, surface wellhead systems, high-pressure fluid control equipment, measurement solutions, and marine loading systems. They also provide flowback and wireline services for the Oil and Gas Industry.

So Much Data, So Little Time

FMC Technologies is a global provider of technology solutions for the Energy Industry that designs, manufactures and services systems and products, including subsea production and processing systems, surface wellhead systems, and marine loading systems. They also offer Completion Services, a comprehensive suite of flowback and wireline services. With over 19,500 employees and 30 production facilities in 16 countries, FMC Technologies collects, organizes, and shares countless amounts of data every day.

When personnel is dispersed into the field, they bring back data of all types and formats (e.g. pdf, zip, db, LAS, TIF and many more) that can range in file size from 100MB to 2GB. Clients require a quick turnaround and want the data placed somewhere that is relatively easy to access and secure. This quickly became a big challenge for FMC Technologies' teams to manage, due to the large amounts of data, spotty internet access, high client demands, and issues around data uploads with an FTP connection.

"After our guys spent 10-12 hours in the field collecting data, the last thing they wanted to do was sit around for another 3-4 hours watching that data upload. This is not to mention the fact that we were also having to put more man hours on our books," says Zachary Curry, solutions architect for FMC Technologies.

Along with countless hours spent, they were spending thousands of dollars on DVDs and thumb drives to help save, organize, and distribute their data. It was clearly time for the company to take a look at a new file-sharing model.

Saving Time is Saving Money

When taking a look at their organization's needs, cloud-only solutions, like Box and Dropbox, were not going to cut it. FMC Technologies needed a solution with access to the cloud and on-premise storage that would be able to handle massive file uploads in a timely fashion and be able to communicate with other offices all over North America at the same time.

"We immediately fell in love with the Egnyte platform because it was customizable to our specific needs. Egnyte could handle all of our file uploads, store them locally on our NAS devices, and securely share them across our remote offices and headquarters in the US and Canada," said Curry.

Without having to use a VPN or FTP connection, FMC Technologies' field employees are now able to quickly upload their day's work onto their local NAS device and let Egnyte take care of the rest. Egnyte is able to take all of their data and sync it to the cloud and back down to their corporate stations in Denver, Colorado and Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

This change in process has allowed FMC Technologies to cut down their employees' hours by 2-3 hours per day, saving the company an estimated $300,000 - $500,000 annually. This is not only good for the company's balance sheet, it is also a plus for team morale. The field crews can now focus all of their attention on work in the field and not have to dread the data upload process. In addition, the company's analysts are able to quickly interpret the results and use Egnyte's Share as a Link option to easily share data with their clients.

Egnyte's API goes Above and Beyond

As FMC Technologies got more comfortable with the Egnyte platform, they had the idea for an application to take their file sharing to the next level. With the help of Egnyte's APIs, they were able to create an HTML-based application that allows them to capture even more details about the work they are doing at the field level. This tool allows them to go a step further in monitoring their data collection and also helps them more effectively organize the data on their local NAS device.

"Our advanced Egnyte Uploader is also able to communicate with our electronic invoice system so we are able to auto populate invoices as soon as a ticket is complete. This has cut down our process immensely and again freed up more time for us to focus on our field research and data collection," said Chris Primeau, FMC Completion Services IT manager.

Whether they are accessing information via a mobile device in the field, uploading critical data to their local NAS device, or sharing their work externally with clients, Egnyte has helped transform the way FMC Technologies does business. As they continue to grow, Egnyte will continue to provide a customized solution that suits their needs.